This invention relates to forward error correction, and more particularly forward error correction systems with an extended effective block size.
Electronic communication channels can be used to transmit large quantities of information. However, such communication channels commonly include noise that can corrupt the transmitted information, thus introducing errors. To mitigate the effects of communication channel noise, error control systems are applied to the communication channels. In error controlled communication channels, the sender of the information can add carefully designed redundant information (i.e., error correction code) to its messages. The redundant information is designed such that the receiver of the messages is able to use the redundant information to detect and correct errors without the need for the sender to re-send the messages. Such schemes are generally referred to as Forward Error Correction (FEC).
Various types of coding schemes can be used to produce redundant data for an FEC scheme. One commonly used scheme is the Low Density Parity Code (LDPC). LDPC coding schemes, which encodes data such that it can be decoded efficiently using a soft decision iterative decoder, for example, based on a factor graph representation.